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Sparta curriculum administrator announces retirement

Photo by Daniel Freel/New Jersey Herald - Kathleen Monks, Sparta’s assistant superintendent for curriculum/staff development, smiles as she receives praise from the Sparta Board of Education. Her retirement was announced during the meeting.

SPARTA — The district's assistant superintendent for curriculum/staff development, Kathleen Monks, announced that she will be retiring at the end of December.

At this week's Board of Education meeting, board members expressed sadness that Monks is leaving, but said the district will act quickly to find a replacement.

"On behalf of the board and myself ... we will miss you," President Keith Smith said. "I'm jealous actually. I'd love to be retiring tomorrow as well."

Smith and Superintendent Dennis Tobin thanked Monks for her 14 years with the district and wished her well.

"We couldn't have done it without you or gotten to where we are without you," Smith said.

Tobin explained that a search committee consisting of central office administrators, building level principals, curriculum supervisors and a board representative will be put together. He said the position will be advertised for 10 days and posted online the weekend after Labor Day. Then, interviews would be conducted before a final candidate would come before the full board.

"I would also invite the full board ... to take a look and help us paper screen," Tobin said. "That is my thought process regarding the process to fill that position."

He said that the time frame would be to act as quickly as possible, but that the district "would fill the position once we feel comfortable with a candidate after the interviewing process."

One board member, Frank Favichia, recommended that the board leave the position open in advertisements and online until it is filled so that the applicant pool can be larger. Tobin said it is better to have a closing date so they can interview and hire.

"We are looking to move on this," Tobin said. "We will get applications the first two weeks after it's posted. If we are not happy with the applicants we get ... we would absolutely re-advertise."

Monks' retirement is the third top administrator to leave since last fall. In October, the Board of Education's secretary and assistant superintendent for business, Warren Ceurvels, terminated his contract several months after an unexpected $3 million surplus led to disagreements between Ceurvels and the superintendent.

Then in June, the board announced that former Superintendent Thomas Morton was retiring after 10 years in the district. He accepted a position as superintendent for a larger district in Clarkstown, N.Y.

Monks is the most recent administrator to retire. Her contract, which goes through June 30, 2013, will be terminated Dec. 31. She received a base salary of $166,500, a freeze from the previous year.

Email failure

At Monday's meeting, the board also discussed an email glitch that deleted all data for some district users last week.

Individuals using the district's online webmail system, such as board members, lost all of their old emails, according to Linda Alvarez, board secretary/business administrator.

Others who use Microsoft Outlook on desktop computers in the school buildings, such as teachers and administrators, initially lost old emails, but they were recovered.

She explained that the email server's backing up mechanism failed earlier this year, but an error message did not occur since the server continued to act as though it were backing up the system.

Favichia and another board member, Rich Bladek, questioned why and how this happened. Tobin assured them that the district would be providing the board with more detail about what happened and future plans for an off-site storage option.

"What are we going to do to prevent this from happening again?" Bladek asked. "What is our recovery plan? To me, it is very vague and preliminary. Where is the detail?"

Favichia asked if this email failure is exposing the district to any liability, but Tobin said administrators were spared.

"As a central office administrative staff, we do not operate through webmail," Tobin said. "We do everything through the server."

Alvarez said Microsoft and the storage service has been looking at what happened and testing it.

"A tornado came through our email system and it will never happen again," Alvarez said. "It was a very unique event."